L.L. Zamenhof and Zionism

The other day, walking through a small park in the district of Pietà on my way to Valletta, I was surprised to see a bust of L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of the international auxiliary language known as Esperanto. My first thought was, I didn't know he had a connection with Malta. And, as it happens, he didn't!

Zamenhof was born in what was then the Russian Empire and spent most of his life in the city of Warsaw. For reasons I have yet to fathom (but which probably relate to Malta's somewhat fraught linguistic ecology) Zamenhof's ideas took root here and some five decades ago the local Esperanto Society saw fit to devote funds to the creation of a public monument.

It's not a great work of art and the awkwardly-truncated arms are a little distracting. But this memorial is not bad as such projects go, and certainly a good deal less ugly than many of the official commemorative sculptures and monuments I have seen on this island.

Despite my lack of interest in Esperanto (the very notion of a constructed international auxiliary language is ill-conceived, in my opinion), I quite like the monument. Its scale and proportions are perfect and there is no nonsense or pomposity about it.

Zamenhof was a physician by profession, specialising in ophthalmology, and not an academic linguist. His main linguistic project was inspired by the naive belief that, if the peoples of the world shared a common language, peace would reign. Basically Zamenhof was a religious rather than a political thinker; his social philosophy was based on Rabbinic Judaism, specifically on the ideas of Hillel the Elder and his school.

Responding to the rise of violence against Jews within the Russian Empire which followed the assassination of the Tsar (Alexander II) in 1881, Zamenhof became involved with proto-Zionist groups, founding the Warsaw chapter of Hibbat Zion. He soon had doubts, however, and withdrew from the movement.

Zamenhof was convinced that Zionism, as he saw it developing in the later years of the 19th century and into the 20th, was fatally flawed and would not serve the true interests of the Jewish people.

In a work published in Russian in 1901, Zamenhof gave three reasons why Zionism was unrealizable: "firstly, because the Hebrew language is not alive, and if the Jewish religion did not exist, it would have died a long time ago; secondly, Zionism is wrong in its conception of Jewish nationalistic feeling: the Jews of various countries have no common ground apart from the religious one; thirdly, Palestine is too small – it will contain approximately only two million – so the whole Jewish question will not be solved."

Note his emphasis on the Jewish religion as the key driver of Jewish identity. This makes sense to me. His views on nationalism, on the other hand, I have reservations about.

In 1914 he wrote: "I am deeply convinced that all nationalism represents only the greatest misfortune for humanity, and that the aim of all people should be: to create a harmonious humanity. It is true that the nationalism of oppressed nations – as a natural self-defense reaction – is much more forgivable than the nationalism of oppressing nations; but, if the nationalism of the strong is ignoble, the nationalism of the weak is imprudent; both give birth to and support each other, and present a vicious circle of misfortunes, from which mankind will never emerge, if each of us will not sacrifice his group self-love and will not try to stand on completely neutral ground."

There is real insight here; the logic is consistent and, within limits, compelling. The problem, as I see it, is with Zamenhof's assumptions: his Enlightenment-inspired, "blank slate" view of human nature; and his implicit conflation of nation and nation-state.

Zamenhof ignores the fact that "group self-love" is a perennial human reality. Certainly it can get out of hand and generate xenophobia and violence, but it also plays a positive – in fact an essential – role in encouraging cooperative behaviour within groups.

The Zionist movement understood this and rejected Zamenhof's dogmatic and naive internationalism. So far, so good.

What the Zionists didn't grasp, however, is that combining their views on the importance of group identity with a perspective on nationhood shaped by Romantic political myths would only lead to trouble. Given the complexities of ethnic and cultural divides, seeing the nation-state as a universal solution, as the only way to satisfy ethnically-based yearnings and feelings of group identity is both confused and dangerous.

Such an approach leads inevitably to "a vicious circle of misfortunes" (as Zamenhof put it), to an unending cycle of conflict and violence.

Remarks on culture and religion

I want to recapitulate here and expand on some points I made elsewhere in partial response to a piece written by Daniel Kaufman entitled "Remarks on religion".

First of all, I should explain that I am not much interested in talking about religion in religious or strictly philosophical terms. Philosophical discussions about the existence of God, free will, etc. strike me as fundamentally theological in nature even if an atheistic line is being pursued (as it often is). I have the same feeling about much of philosophical ethics. It has its roots in (moral) theology and religious disputation – and it shows!

It is worth noting that many religious people – including intelligent ones – have been hostile to theology and the ready application of philosophical methods to religious questions. Blaise Pascal, for example, distinguished between the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (his God) and "the God of the philosophers" (as he scornfully put it). He satirized the casuistry of the Jesuits of his day and the trivialization of morality and the hypocrisy which it entailed.

I am sympathetic to Pascal's point of view but, since I am not religious, my rejection of theology is based on different grounds from his and is more thoroughgoing. I simply do not see theology as a serious or viable area of study.

In earlier times, of course, theology (or divinity) was widely seen as a high-status discipline: the queen of the sciences, no less. And, in the Christian West, philosophy derived its scholarly status from theology of which it was seen to be an integral part, as well as from ancient Greek and Roman thinkers many of whose ideas had been incorporated into medieval and Renaissance thought. Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics were especially influential.

Two broad areas which developed within this theological matrix did become viable secular fields of study: natural philosophy (or what we now generally call science); and logic. Mathematics had regressed in Roman and medieval times and only began to flourish again in the 17th century with the rise of modern science.

I realize all this is broad-brush and oversimplified but it should help explain my general attitude to philosophy and religion and, with respect to the latter, my tendency to focus on the historical, cultural and psychological side of things.

Dan had contrasted the evangelical and Pentecostal Christians of the Bible Belt with two Jewish Hasidic sects:

"When I first moved to the Bible Belt, I was surprised by the level of confidence people had in their particular brand of evangelical or Pentecostal Christianity (some of them brands I’d never even heard of until that point) and used to think that the best thing for them would be to live in a Lubavitch or Satmar community for a few weeks, where it would become quickly evident that there were people far more religiously committed and more rigorous in their religious lifestyles than they are."

Unlike these Jewish groups, evangelicals and Pentecostals profess and proclaim (in Kaufman’s words) their own “extraordinary and intense religious faith” whilst behaving in other respects “pretty much like everyone else.”

The main criticism here is being directed at a particular group of Christians and I can't really comment on its appropriateness. I do have the sense, however, that the tenor of these passages may betray a lack awareness of the standard Christian view of what religious commitment is at its core and what it entails. Whatever it is, it is decidedly not about outward forms and observances; and it is not in the least competitive. The very notion of "religious lifestyle" is alien to the standard Christian view as I understand it.

I have no direct knowledge of "Bible Belt" Christians, nor of the Jewish groups mentioned. Regarding the latter, Chabad-Lubavitch and Satmar are rival, Brooklyn-based Hasidic sects originating in Russia and Hungary respectively. They differ, amongst other things, in terms of their attitudes to outreach and proselytizing within the wider Jewish community [Chabad is active in such activity but Satmar is not]; and in terms of their attitudes to Zionism and the state of Israel [Satmar remains staunchly anti-Zionist].

Dan talks about the “self-deception” or “psychic indolence” involved in seeing ancient religious texts as embodying eternal truths “about the nature and operation of the universe and everything and everyone in it” rather than in more realistic terms. He characterizes sacred texts as “fascinating and often lurid elements from the eclectic, messy, often ugly history of human development.” Fair comment.

I would have thought that one way US evangelical Christians differ from, say, Jewish ultra-Orthodox or extremist Islamic groups, is in their relative openness to the modern world, to ordinary life.

Mixing faith-based and modern views necessarily involves inconsistencies. But compartmentalization of one kind or another is a universal feature of our brains. Some of the greatest scientists bracketed out their religious beliefs in rather crude ways or aligned themselves with extreme and anti-rational ideologies or political movements. Though most of us manage to avoid such extremes, the logical aspect of our thinking is always in an awkward or ambiguous relationship with more emotional aspects of thought – including those that relate to existential anxieties, to attachments and aversions, to religion, politics, self-image and identity.

The final issue I raised was that of cultural and religious identity. In the course of his discussion, Dan explicitly acknowledged his Jewish lineage as well as the essentially secular Jewish culture in which he was raised. For his parents – and for himself, apparently – ancestral religious practices continued to be meaningful in the absence of belief.

For me there is a tension here, a potential problem. I realize that Judaism is not creed-based or doctrinal in the way many Christian groupings are, but beliefs are still important. It seems to me that if a member of a religious (or even a political) group stops believing the central doctrines of the group, he or she ceases to be, in a real and fundamental sense, a part of that group, even if there is little change in outward behaviour. What was deeply motivated is now merely "going through the motions." This phrase says it all.

I see that people brought up within a particular religious group or sect or denomination will continue to share a common cultural background but if they have left the sect or ceased believing its fundamental tenets their sense of themselves – and of their relationship to the group – changes. Their sense of identification with the group is necessarily reduced and qualified. This is why defining Jewishness largely in terms of the religious tradition (in terms, that is, of Judaism) is obviously a problem for non-religious Jews. When scriptures lose their special status and come to be seen solely in historical or literary terms, when prayers and rituals are no longer expressions of religious experience but mere nostalgic forms or reassuring customs, they gradually but inexorably lose their power to command attention and motivate religious practice. They become museum pieces. They die.

Religious Jews, of course, are committed to maintaining not just the rituals and practices but also the beliefs that shaped and motivated these practices. So the tension I speak of here does not apply to them. (The problems of inconsistency and compartmentalization alluded to above may apply, however.)

My preference is to see group affiliations in personal and individual terms, simply in terms of sets of shared and overlapping cultural elements and personal values. And, to the extent that Jewishness is seen in this way (i.e. as an evolving element within various disparate cultures rather than in terms of direct links with an ancient, Hebrew-speaking population and the religious practices and beliefs of that population), existential questions about cultural survival simply will not arise.